I'm a Fellow at the Adam Smith Institute in London, a writer here and there on this and that and strangely, one of the global experts on the metal scandium, one of the rare earths. An odd thing to be but someone does have to be such and in this flavour of our universe I am. I have written for The Times, Daily Telegraph, Express, Independent, City AM, Wall Street Journal, Philadelphia Inquirer and online for the ASI, IEA, Social Affairs Unit, Spectator, The Guardian, The Register and Techcentralstation. I've also ghosted pieces for several UK politicians in many of the UK papers, including the Daily Sport.

Boeing Might Be Copying Apple's Innovation Policies But It Doesn't Understand Them

Here’s an interesting little thing being said by the head of BoeingBoeing. That the company is going to adopt AppleApple like policies on innovation. Rather than go all out to launch or design an entirely new product they’ll be going with piecemeal development of already extant products. The only problem with this is that this isn’t what Apple actually does.

Apple’s culture of continuous innovation, not gambling on “moonshot” breakthroughs, will guide Boeing’s work on new aircraft, Chief Executive Officer Jim McNerney said today at an investor conference in Seattle. The latest plane on the drawing boards would borrow from Boeing’s investment in redesigning the narrow-body 737 and twin-aisle 787-8 Dreamliner, he said.

Boeing is shifting away from focusing on “a singular technology launch” such as the 707, the plane that first flew in 1954 and helped usher in the jet era, Chief Operating Officer Dennis Muilenburg said. “That’s the big change here.”

There’s nothing particularly wrong with that as a plan, it’s just that that isn’t what Apple itself actually does. It’s therefore not correct to describe it as Apple’s strategy.

A useful way of thinking about this is to differentiate between invention and innovation in the manner that some economists do. Invention is the creation of some whizzy new thing. Or perhaps a new category of an extant thing. This is akin to the singular technology launch mentioned above. The 747 for example, was not the first airplane, but it was most definitely the first of a new category of airplanes. We can also use the word innovation, which in this sense means the development of and already extant technology or category in small steps. This is what is meant here by Apple’s strategy. The iPhone 5 wasn’t all that different from the 5c and 5s. Better processors, finer screens, that sort of thing, but quite clearly an evolutionary development of the same device.

What McNerney means here is that Boeing’s not going to bet the entire company on developing an entirely new category of airframe, as they did with the 747 and 787 (the real bet there was whether airlines would want to adopt the business structures that those planes were designed for). Rather, they’ll mix and match advancing technologies across the basic patterns that they already have.

As I say, there’s nothing wrong with that. It’s just that it’s not what Apple itself does. For Apple has launched three new categories of products in just the last 15 years. Sure, there were MP3 players before the iPod but it was the Apple product that defined the genre and became the most successful. There were smartphones before the iPhone and attempts at tablets before the iPad but they were, in their sophistication and design, the first ones that were actually successful: singular technology launches in the jargon we’re using here.

It’s only after those singular launches, those inventions, that Apple then exploits the new category by rolling out the innovations in subsequent years. So to say that Boeing isn’t going to have those singular launches means that it’s not going to be following that Apple game plan. They’re at best, following half of it.

So Boeing might be copying Apple’s innovation policies but I don’t think they’ve fully understood what they are as yet.

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I provide services around innovation and growth – including IP – and would disagree with your definition of the difference between invention and innovation. Yes, invention is the original creative act qnd may produce a variety of IP whether registrable or not. Innovation, however, is better described as the sucessful commercialisation of invention. The increments you refer to you i.e. progressions beyond the original invention are better described as incremental invention. With regards. Roy +44 7956 502 309

Various people use invention and innovation with different meanings in different parts of the conversation. This is why I outlined the meanings that I was using here. I agree that we can define them as you argue we should: it’s just that in the specific literature I was drawing that argument from (largely William Baumol) they use the meanings I’ve given there.

Airbus already beat them to it with the A330 neo announcement. Not sure about your differentiation as well. Written here about it http://developingengineers.com/engineering-news-politics/of-bicycle-seats-and-standing-spaces-onboard-an-airbus